Prince Harry, the younger son of King Charles, had been seeking to overturn a UK High Court ruling last year over the decision by the Executive Committee for the Protection of Royalty and Public Figures (RAVEC) to downgrade his security.

Delivering his verdict on Friday, judge Geoffrey Vos said the arguments presented by the duke’s barrister, Shaheed Fatima, were “powerful and moving” and that it was “plain that the Duke of Sussex felt badly treated by the system.”

However, after studying all of the relevant documentation, Vos concluded that the duke’s sense of grievance did not translate into a legal argument for the challenge to RAVEC’s decision.

The case was deeply personal to Harry, who has previously expressed how important it is for him to ensure his family has security when they visit the UK.

For the duke, there has been a sense of not wanting history to repeat itself, and he has frequently drawn comparisons between his wife Meghan’s treatment to that faced by his mother, Diana. The late Princess of Wales died in 1997 after suffering internal injuries resulting from a high-speed car crash in Paris, while being pursued by paparazzi.

RAVEC changed Harry’s protection status in February 2020 after he and Meghan stepped down as working members of the British royal family and instead revealed their plans to split their time between the UK and North America.

Last year, retired High Court judge Peter Lane refused to allow a judicial review of the RAVEC roll-back, as requested by Harry, concluding that the committee’s approach was not irrational or unlawful, and “there was no procedural unfairness.”

Harry, 40, returned to the UK for the two-day hearing at the Court of Appeals in London in April. In that hearing, Fatima argued the judge had been mistaken and that that the duke had been “singled out for different unjustified and inferior treatment” by the committee. (CNN/Reuters)